London band The Delinquents made their live debut on June 19, 1974 at the student union bar of Queen Elizabeth College, Kensington. The sound and image was pure glam, modeled heavily on Mott the Hoople. Novice guitarist Mick Jones [The Clash, not Foreigner] was so devoted to main man Ian Hunter that he carried a copy of Hunter’s Diary of a Rock'n'Roll Star book everywhere he went. It was young Jones’ rock and roll bible.

Punk icons, The Clash and The Sex Pistols, supposedly Britain’s two fiercest purveyors of youth angst, anarchy and anti-social venom, were, in fact, far more traditional in their musical tastes than punk mythology would ever care to admit.

Johnny Rotten may have worn an “I hate Pink Floyd“ t-shirt, but away from the cameras, he was a huge fan of Gilmour and company.

And Mick Jones, the guitar snarl of The Clash, was more inclined to style himself along T-Rex and Mott the Hoople glam lines than anything avant-garde or dangerous in the early ’70s.

And as for punk decrying anything that those musical dinosaurs (this, in 1976!) The Beatles and the Stones had put on vinyl, the young Stones fan Mick Jones trekked off to see Mick and Keith at the legendary Hyde Park Festival. He told Time Out: “I was quite young, and I wormed my way the whole day through the crowd to get to the barrier just before they came on. It was like a great trek or odyssey. I was like ‘Excuse me, coming through… Oh, sorry…’ treading on people all the way through Hyde Park. I wormed my way through and then the Hell’s Angels came through the crowd on their motorbikes! Everyone was going ‘Oh my god!’ It was a wonderful moment.”

As Jones became obsessed with music in the ’70s, it was the dirty, glam, pub-rock sound of Mott the Hoople that stirred Jones to rock and roll action.

His school pal Don Whistance remembered that: “Mick always appeared to be carrying LPs around with him and used to wear his hair longer than the rest of us. In 1974, Ian Hunter's account of Mott the Hoople's 1972 U.S. tour under the title Diary of a Rock'n'Roll Star was published and Mick Jones devoured the book avidly, taking it as the blueprint for his own musical future.”

Jones recalled those early music fan days to Gibson.com: “I followed Mott the Hoople up and down the country. I’d go to Liverpool or Newcastle or somewhere—sleep on the Town Hall steps, and bunk the fares on the trains, hide in the toilet when the ticket inspector came around. I’d jump off just before the train got to the station and climb over the fence. It was great times, and I always knew I wanted to be in a band and play guitar. That was it for me.”

With the Delinquents falling by the way side, Jones formed London SS with future Generation X man Tony James, mostly playing Stones and, of course, Mott the Hoople covers.

But England was changing fast. The recession was biting hard and Jones’ next musical collaboration with the overtly political Joe Strummer would result in one of the great punk bands of the 1970s, The Clash.

The Clash years give Mick Jones fame, fortune, credibility and global respect, but the musical icing on his cake came in 1981 when, at the height of Clash notoriety, he was invited to play guitar for his hero Ian Hunter and wound up co-producing Hunter’s lauded back-to-basics album, Short Back N’ Sides.